USA Volleyball assemblies are the foundations of USAV’s governance structure, providing broad-based constituencies the opportunity to gather, discuss and provide recommendations with respect to the direction and operation of USAV’s programs in alignment with USAV’s mission.

Once formally approved by the USA Volleyball Board of Directors, the Beach Assembly will meet on an ongoing, regular basis to advise the USAV staff and Board on a full range of beach issues including events, membership, championships… etc.

"It was great to be in the room with so many people interested in addressing, improving and integrating the various interests of stakeholders in beach volleyball,” said Steve Lindecke, founder of the Elevation Group, which produces the Corona Light Wide Open beach volleyball series. “Everyone was focused on making sure that this assembly properly represents the sport."

“I was really impressed by the progress made by the task force,” added USA Volleyball CEO Doug Beal, who attended the two-day meeting, held in conjunction with the Manhattan Beach Open, part of the Jose Cuervo Pro Beach Volleyball Tour produced by USA Volleyball and IMG. “Not only did the group get a lot of work accomplished, but it was clear that it had the best interests of the sport at heart. They wanted to make sure that the USAV Beach Assembly represents all of the sport’s constituencies.”

From those in attendance, the organizing committee named seven people to form a leadership group to represent the identified beach volleyball populations.

Laura Ratto, director of player development and community outreach for the National Volleyball League (NVL), will represent the owners of national beach volleyball tours on behalf of Albert Hannemann, founder of the NVL.

Michelle Goodall, the Iowa Region’s director of membership development, will work for USA Volleyball’s member organizations with beach programming particularly the USAV regional volleyball associations; as well as others that program beach activities.

Eric Hodgson, marketing director of the Arizona Region, will work with Goodall on youth and junior beach volleyball issues. Lindecke will work with Goodall to represent adult recreational players.

“The meeting was awesome,” Colgan said. “I think we did good work in there.”

The next step is to determine voting delegates on the Beach Assembly. The tentative date for the organizing committee’s next meeting is at the AVCA Convention on Dec. 14-18 in San Antonio, Texas.